Posted by Brian Mahoney, Vice President – Ticket Sales

As electronic entertainment choices proliferate and a generation of people cuts off access to traditional broadcast television entirely, it seemed time to look at the usage of YouTube and television streaming services on the web by Telecharge Broadway ticket buyers (are the Today show and GMA streamed on line? How will customers see our TV spots?).

At one time it seemed improbable to use the word “YouTube” and Broadway ticket buyer in the same sentence but times are changing. The answers vary a bit by geography and certainly by age but the overall number is significant: 75% of respondents said they have used YouTube, with out of town customers saying yes more than NYC or suburban residents (75% versus 70%). Not surprisingly the Wednesday Matinee customers dragged down the average with positive responses closer to 65%.

Before everyone gets too excited, the devil is in the details.

We asked those who answered yes to tell us their frequency of use of YouTube. The good news is 26% said a few times a week and 10% said at least once a day. The other 64% reported less frequent usage. The largest group of responses (29%) came from those who said a few times a month with 24% saying only when someone tells me to look at a video. The final 9% said rarely. Similar to the pattern of social media usage, in the categories of heavier usage suburban customers lagged NYC and out of town customers, and more of them said they only look at YouTube when someone tells them to look at a video.

But there is more:

Surprisingly the average age of those who said they had used YouTube was older – yes OLDER – than the average of a Telecharge Broadway buyer, musical or play. Why? Probably because they had seen more shows. The average age of the Telecharge Broadway buyer is 52 (55 for plays) while the average age of those who said they had used YouTube was 56. The average number of shows (in their lifetime on our file) for the yes group was 10 versus 5 for the average Telecharge Broadway buyer (4 for plays). Those who said no were a few years older and had seen on average even more shows than the yes group.

Watching Television streaming on the web.

Are you are a glass half full or glass half empty person? 40% of Telecharge ticket buyers reported being a regular watcher of Television on the web using a streaming service (e.g. Roku, Hulu, Netflix) (so 60% are not). As we have seen with other questions, the suburban audience lagged the NYC and out of town customers, 37% in the suburbs as opposed to 40% elsewhere.

The average age for those who reported they were a regular watcher of television on the web using a streaming service was almost the same as the Broadway average. Of course many of the people who said yes to the YouTube question upon further examination were only occasional users (rarely, to only when someone tells me to look at a video, to a few times a month). The average number of shows in their Telecharge purchase history was similarly close to the Broadway average: 8 for streaming television users versus 10 for Broadway multi-buyers.

Where does this leave us? 36% use YouTube and 40% use streaming television services regularly.

We know there are Broadway fans who engage with social media. With this survey we know there are Broadway ticket buyers on Telecharge who have used social media for Broadway (or at least seen a post in their newsfeed). But how old are they? How close are they to the average age of Broadway attendees? We thought it would be interesting to learn more about how old they are so we matched the answers against our database. Big data in action.

What did we learn? It should come as no surprise that those who answered yes to any of the social media questions were younger than those who answered no; that applied both to multi-buyers and those with only one purchase in the file. Those who answered no were also older than the average age of the Telecharge Broadway ticket buyer. The age of the yes respondents varied and was much closer to the average for all Telecharge Broadway ticket buyers. The yes customers in most cases had fewer shows in their record than those who answered no (but then again the respondents who answered no were older).

The difference in age between those who had not engaged with Facebook for Broadway, and those who had in one way or another (seen a posting in their newsfeed on Facebook, visited a show’s Facebook page or posted about their Broadway experience on their own Facebook page), was 7-8 years. The average age of those who had not engaged with Facebook for Broadway was 60.

When just looking at those who only had one show in their history, the age difference between those who said yes and those who said no for all three questions was 6-8 years, with the average age of those who said no being 56.

The data on multi-buyers was about the same except that the average age of those who said no was 61-62.

Twitter usage skewed younger with a greater spread between those who answered yes to seeing a tweet and those who said no. The customers who answered averaged 48 and they were 10.5 years older than those who had not.

For comparison the average age of Telecharge Broadway buyers is 52.5 with musical buyers averaging 51.7 and play goers 55.5.

The results are encouraging. While those who answered yes were on average younger than those who answered no, we are still seeing people in their mid-late 40’s and early 50’s engaging with Broadway on social media.

For those who love data, here are a few more data points.

The average age in NYC was a bit lower than those from out of town with the suburban customers coming in oldest of all three.

The suburban Wednesday Matinee customers who did engage with Facebook were 6-7 years older on average than the other groups. The difference was not as much for NYC and out of town Wednesday Matinee customers.

The youngest average ages belonged to NYC residents answering yes to a question regarding the use of Facebook: 46 for those had visited a show’s Facebook page, 49 for those who had seen a posting in their newsfeed and 48 for those who has written on their own Facebook page about a Broadway experience. For Twitter it was the average age for NYC respondents was 44.

Posted by Brian Mahoney, Vice President – Ticket SalesThis is part 2 of the information on social media usage we obtained from the last survey.With five questions on social media, spreading it over multiple posts made sense so no one’s eyes glazed over.Twitter reach and usage for Broadway is much lower than for Facebook – at least among Telecharge ticket buyers.

We asked “Have you ever received a tweet about a Broadway show”; 11% said yes.Twitter reach for Telecharge buyers was light in the suburbs (8%) and heavier in NYC and amongst out of town customers (both13%) but still not very high.

As for sending tweets, only 10% of Telecharge customers had: 6% of the suburban respondents and 11% of out of town and NYC customers.

Almost twice as many NYC and out of town customers sent a tweet about a show as suburban customers.

Comparing Twitter to Facebook, Telecharge customers reported that posts in a Facebook newsfeed reached 4 times as many people as tweets about a show (and 4 times as many people posted about a show on their Facebook page as sent a tweet about a show).Telecharge customers were slightly less inclined to write on their own Facebook page about a show (either their experience at a show or their plans to see a show) – 36% - than their friends or relatives whose Broadway experiences showed up in their newsfeed – 44%.The next post on social media will include data on average age of those who use (and don’t use) social media.

We love social media.It’s cheap, it’s fun.Everyone has a good time talking about the social activity we generate as well as what people are saying in posts and tweets, not to mention how many likes and followers there are.The raw numbers of likes and followers provide comfort that the show has a strong fan base who will buy tickets.The posts provide a lift as well in the form of positive feedback from the fan base.Everything is coming up Roses.But are we reaching today’s ticket buyers?Who is engaging with social media for Broadway?

We asked five questions about the use of social media.The first - and possibly the most important- was “Have you ever seen a post in your newsfeed on Facebook about a Broadway show either from the show, or a family member or friend?”44% said yes, with fewer New Yorkers saying yes (41%) than out of town customers (45%).The Wednesday Matinee customers posted the lowest percentages: 35% NYC, 37% suburbs and 38% out of town.The highest percentages were posted by the second year customers, not a large sample (1,200) as compared to the total but still significant: 47% NYC, 42% suburbs and 52% out of town.

We also asked “Have you ever visited a show’s Facebook page?”27% said yes, with a range between 23% in the suburbs and 31% out of town, with NYC at 24%.Once again the Wednesday matinee customers were not heavy users of Broadway show Facebook pages: 27% of the out of town respondents but only 20% of locals (both New Yorkers and those who live in the suburbs).Then we asked those who said they had visited a show’s Facebook page if they had “liked” the show on Facebook: 78% of those who had visited a show’s webpage said they had “liked” the show on Facebook (for the statisticians reading this that is 78% of the 27%).

There are some interesting takeaways in this data.50% more customers saw a post in their newsfeed than visited a show’s Facebook page.Are most of those posts from when their friends or family saw the show?Is this a form of “word of mouth”?This suggests the payoff to a show in Facebook activity is greater from the number of posts made by customers in their own feeds than it is from the number of “likes” or visits to the page.For a potential customer to know about likes they have to visit the show’s Facebook page (or at least the page of a friend or family member who had “liked” the show), which requires both a decision to visit and the action of visiting whereas a posting that appears in your newsfeed requires virtually no work.You have to be active with one and you can be passive with the other.At the same time the low usage by our loyal Wednesday Matinee crowd suggests social media is still used by younger audiences, or at least younger by Broadway standards (or Wednesday matinee standards).

Encouraging posts from people who have seen the show is an activity that could pay dividends.With all the problems with ringing cell phone usage (not to mention trying to charge the phones when on low battery), how to generate posts around attendance without creating more problems may be challenging.

Posted by Brian Mahoney, Vice President – Ticket SalesLet’s Go to the Videotape

Not sports highlights but for a Broadway show.We asked Telecharge customers whether video content on the show website, Telecharge or Broadway.com was useful in their decision.

The answer is it depends.Overall 53% of respondents said yes.But there is more variance than with the answers to some other questions.

Out of town customers answered that they found video most useful.57% answered yes.

New Yorkers found it the least useful, 46%, while residents of the suburbs were in the middle, 53%.

Those who attended Wed Mats and answered yes were on the low side: 41% of NYC residents and 50% of suburban.

Of course, out of town is the largest segment of the Broadway audience.Does your show have all the current video on Telecharge where we know many customers look at more than one show?

Outdoor Advertising

There is a saying in marketing that 50% of advertising is wasted and everyone wants to know which 50% it is.Well the good news is when asked if people notice outdoor advertising for Broadway shows (and they could check all that apply), 84% checked Billboards (84% of out of town, 88% of suburban customers, and 77% of New Yorkers).

What other outdoor did they see?

Buses: 59% said they saw outdoor advertising on buses (52% out of town, 57% suburbs and 77% NYC)

Taxi TV: 21% (21% out of town, 14% suburban residents and 31% NYC).

Other was 12%.This could include subways, suburban train platforms.

The answers on Taxi advertising are interesting.The supposition is we are reaching lots of out-of-town customers who we assume are taking cabs, and yet the reach is strongest with locals.Buses are another medium that we assume reaches out of town customers and yet the data tells us is stronger with New Yorkers.

Go figure.

Does Ticket Price affect a Customer’s Decision to see a show?

This is a touchy question as most customers will say prices are high.As a first pass on this topic we asked a vague question, which people in the industry will interpret through their own lens, rose colored or not.The question we asked: “Has your decision to see a show or not ever been affected by the regular ticket price of the show?”

80% said yes.

Which group was affected the most?Suburban customers at 88%, followed by New Yorkers at 86%.Out of town visitors were the least affected at 73%.

Now do these customers understand what we mean when we say the regular price of the ticket?Maybe, maybe not.When they answer whether the price affected their decision, did they mean they decided to buy because of the price or they decided not to buy because of the price?The issue requires more research.What we do know for sure is ticket price is a factor to a significant population of customers; we can’t assume price does not have an effect on one’s decision to see a show.In economic terms the demand is not inelastic.And yet most shows charge the same top price ($140-$150) with the strongest selling shows charging more.And very few shows charge less in previews.

In a recent post we reported on how many customers do research on the web before a purchase and how many sites they visit.

Where do they look?Good news for the digital marketing teams:

over 60% visit the show’s website (note while it is not 100%, two thirds said they did research so there is a small percentage that may not use the show website for research);

67% of out of town customers used the show’s website as a source of information (which suggests they start with an idea of what show they might want to see).

78% of customers visit a theatre website (people could check more than one answer): Playbill, Theatremania, Broadway World, Broadway.com, etc.

Broadway.com saw the highest percentage with 42%.This is interesting as this was a survey of customers who bought their tickets from Telecharge not Broadway.com (I can say anecdotally I have seen reports where half the sales from people who saw an ad on Broadway.com bought their tickets on Telecharge; how often is that reported on in a meeting?).The percentage of out of town customers listing Broadway.com was larger than those in New York City or the suburbs.

The New York Times website is still fairly strong but mostly with NYC theatre goers.More NYC residents used the NYT website (38%) than Broadway.com (35%); the NYT site was not cited by as many out of town (30%) or suburban customers (26%).

Playbill was stronger than the NYT with out of town customers (31%) but less so with NYC residents (24%).

The site with the third highest percentage of visitors (36%) for research was Telecharge (keep in mind 100% of these customers bought their tickets from Telecharge of which only a small percentage bought by telephone).We see evidence of customers doing research in the data from our website (which hopefully every show is receiving).Some customers visit the Event Summary page for a show where there is a description but don’t buy or even search for tickets.We also see visits either to the Schedule and Pricing page or the Find Tickets page where customers don’t search for tickets.Is the reason they don’t search for tickets after visiting the Find Tickets page sticker shock when they see the prices?We know from our web reports there is a certain amount of browsing amongst shows; it is common that 30-40% of customers who visit a show’s Event Summary page on Telecharge also look at other shows.

While a significant number of customers reported they visited websites with critic’s reviews (26%), 19% reported they visited websites with independent user reviews such as Trip Advisor (21% of out of town customers).As people could check more than one response, the same customer could have looked at a critic’s review and a customer’s.

Is there a drop-off of customers on the Event Summary page for your show on Telecharge?How helpful is the description that was provided for your show?Does it answer the basic question of what is the show is about in the first two sentences (or less) – what one producer recently called in a meeting “the elevator pitch”?Research has shown people want a description of the show, particularly when making a decision on whether to see a show.

What percentage of customers for your show initiates a ticket inquiry after visiting the Find Tickets page?Is it on the low side?Are all the regular ticket prices for your show realistic?You may be losing customers when they see the prices.Not all price sensitive customers have or know to use discount codes.

There are a lot of potential customers for Broadway in the city, in the metropolitan area or planning to visit New York.It is really challenging to generate interest from those who don’t show an interest in seeing a show; it is probably easier to convert those who are already looking.

Are these two programs competitors, meaning it is either or, or complementary?I guess it depends on who your audience is.As this is the time when shows are looking at which programs they will use for the sluggish fall season it seemed like a good time to do some research. Seasons of Savings.Last fall (2014) for Telecharge shows two thirds of the sales (66%) were to suburban customers, 21% to out of town and 13% to the city residents (9% in the boroughs).Season of Savings is very strong in the suburbs.Broadway Week.Last fall (2014) for Telecharge shows 31% of the sales were to customers from the suburbs, 27% to out of town and 42.5% to city residents (23% to residents of the boroughs).Broadway Week is extremely strong in the city, especially in the boroughs.If one looks further at the specific advertising media used by each program the geographical differences in the distribution of sales for the two programs are easier to understand.Each might be serving separate markets within the metropolitan area not well served by traditional Broadway advertising.In case anyone thinks the distribution is different in the winter, 70% of the sales from Seasons of Savings for the winter 2015 program were from the suburbs, 16% were from out of town (we didn’tlike this past winter in NYC why would anyone else?), and 14% was from NYC (9% boroughs).As for Broadway Week, 32% was from the suburbs, 22% from out of town and 46% from NYC (25% boroughs). Both programs bring in customers who over time see another Telecharge Broadway show; they might see a Ticketmaster show but we can’t verify that.

We don’t know much about the research and decision process followed by customers in deciding what shows to see.If we did every show would be a success.In the dark ages of the pre-internet era most of the available information in advance of a show’s opening was the ad in the newspaper, hopefully some press, and other advertising.In the 1990s there was the direct mail piece.Today shows have websites rich with information plus there are websites devoted to Broadway as well as websites with other sources of information such as customer reviews (TripAdvisor, Yelp, NYT customer reviews) and the newspaper sites with reviews from critics.With all the information available now it is a wonder we sold tickets at all before the internet. In our recent survey of Telecharge customers we asked how much research customers do. As one might expect customers do a fair amount of research before making a ticket purchase and much of it is on the web.What percentage of customers research a show before making the final decision?Two-thirds!(So I guess word of mouth is not the be-all and end-all driver of ticket sales; maybe it is the introduction).Interestingly enough the responses varied by geography: 62% of New Yorkers did research while 72% of out of town customers did (and they are always the largest group).How much research do they do?More than two thirds said they visited two or more websites (only 52% of New York City residents looked at that many but perhaps they do not as their level of exposure to what is playing is greater).21% of customers do not visit any websites before making a purchase (there is your word of mouth: 25% of locals, 20% of out of town customers.Some customers visit three or more websites, 24% (13% said 4 or more).Again the out of town customers did more research than New Yorkers.Shows focus on their own website as they should but clearly their one website is not the only source of information used by Broadway customers.We know from Telecharge about 50% of our visits come from show websites; the rest direct select Telecharge or link to us from other sites.To borrow from Situation Interactive’s latest session, what story is in these numbers?What if anything do we do with this information?In part 2 we report on which sites they visit.

Posted by Brian Mahoney, Vice President – Ticket SalesDo people read the NYT Theatre Directory in print (or the ABC’s as they are commonly known)?We asked this question as a follow up only to those who said they read the NYT in print (the assumption was if they did not read the NYT in print they probably did not read the ABC’s in print either).Across the board the percentage is very high (of those who read the NYT in print).

86% of Telecharge ticket buyers who said they read the NYT in print said they read the ABCs (88% NYC, 86% suburbs, 86% out of town).

As there are more out of town ticket buyers for most shows, there were more out of town customers who answered that they read the ABCs in print than in the suburbs or in NYC. Out of town could be as close as Philadelphia, Albany or Hartford, or Los Angeles, Chicago or Houston.

So what percentage of all Telecharge buyers read the ABCs, across all three surveys and in all geographic subsets: 32%.45% of New Yorkers read it, 34% of suburban residents and 30% of the out of town customers (the largest group). When do they read the ABCs in print?

Sunday.50% of out of town Telecharge ticket buyers read it on Sunday, 43% of suburban Telecharge ticket buyers and 36% of NYC Telecharge ticket buyers.

Friday.10% of out of town, 11% of suburban and 19% of NYC.In this question as the percentages were small, more NYC Telecharge ticket buyers said yes than either the suburbs or out of town.

Now does that mean a show should only be in the ABC’s on Sunday and maybe Friday?Well there were two other options we gave those taking the survey (I doubt even a Broadway avid reads the ABC’s every Sunday).

Very occasionally (meaning no specific day which could mean Sunday or Friday or Wednesday, or even Tuesday or Thursday).Suburban customers 23%, NYC 21%, out of town 20%.

Only when I am looking to buy tickets.22% NYC, 22% suburban customers, 19% out of town.

We also asked about Wednesday and the answers were all under 3%.

There was no change in the answers for readership of the NYT by people who saw shows in their second year – however, there were only 1,200 respondents versus 4,500 for the main survey.Similarly more than 90% of the Wednesday Matinee buyers who read the NYT in print read the ABCs (89% NYC, 92% suburbs, 93% out of town). This may surprise you:only 1% of Wednesday Matinee ticket buyers read the ABCs on Wednesday (why would they as Telecharge buyers purchased their tickets in advance!).Their answers for “very occasionally”, “only when I am looking to buy tickets” and Friday closely matched the other groups.One could draw a conclusion from the numbers; as such a high percentage of the readers read the ABC’s, and the out of town percentages in each group are high, it seems likely those who still read the NYT in print are avid theatre-goers.As far as when to be in the ABCs, if there is a formula for days to be in and days to skip the ABCs someone smart will have to figure it out.

One of the great mysteries of our business is how much of an effect the NYT (still) has?Response to good reviews is uneven.Not all ads deliver sales.Do people still read the New York Times?Do they read it in print or just on-line?Do they read the ABC’s (a.k.a. the Theatre Directory)? Everyone has their view about the New York Times readership habits of theatre goers.To help with this discussion we periodically ask Telecharge customers about their readership of the NYT to see if responses have changed and to see if we can learn information useful in the marketing of Broadway shows.We broke up our most recent survey into three groups, which were each further divided into NYC, suburban and out of town.One group was Wednesday Matinee customers, another group was customers who saw a show in its second year or later, and the third group was everyone else (the most important for new shows).The basic question we asked was “do you read the NYT in print”?Yes many do: overall 34% of the respondents said yes.Not a big number.The devil, however, is in the details.In the main group, 29% said yes versus 31% of the second year customers and 43% of Wednesday Matinee buyers.It seems to defy logic but the second year group was very small.When we look at where they live, 48% of NYC ticket buyers said yes versus 38% of suburban ticket buyers and 26% of out of town ticket buyers.It is worth noting, however, that for most shows the largest segment of ticket buyers are from out of town; as far as the survey, 44% of the nearly 8,000 responses were from out of town customers.The result is the 26% who were from out of town generated as many yes answers as those who lived either in NYC or the suburbs.As with much of what we learn about the media habits of theatergoers, there does not appear to be any media that captures a large segment of buyers any longer.The next post will be about readership of the Theatre Directory or the ABCs.